The city council for Columbia, Mo., voted unanimously on Monday to put on the ballot a charter amendment that prohibits eminent domain abuse. Come April 2013, citizens will have the opportunity to bolster their private property rights by voting to approve the amendment.

The Columbia City Council will vote on this amendment tonight. If it passes, it then will go before the voters in a special election in April 2013. Ballot initiatives against abusing eminent domain are very popular. Earlier this month, Virginia overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment to ban eminent domain abuse, by a margin of 3:1.

The Prince William Board of County Supervisors voted 7-1 on Tuesday to support a proposed constitutional amendment that would strictly limit authorizing eminent domain. So far, Prince William County is the largest locality to support the amendment and is the only county in Northern Virginia to do so.

“This will strengthen property rights protections in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This has been controversial. I personally believe that principle comes first. One of the things that distinguishes America and one of the reasons we’ve had such economic growth over the past 200-plus years is our commitment to property rights.”

Alice McGee and JoAnn and Arthur Bailey can finally rest at peace in their beloved homes. Pace Properties has relented in their pursuit of “redeveloping” the Richmond Heights neighborhood, which would have meant using eminent domain to seize and bulldoze these homes to make way for upscale retail development.

This was the third time Hadley Township had threatened to use eminent domain if homeowners didn’t sell to a developer that would wipe out the historically black community. Each time homeowners told the developer that they wanted to remain in the homes they rightfully owned. But this time, the city truly listened. City officials have dropped plans to force “redevelopment” onto a neighborhood that doesn’t want it.

One of the largest is Atlantic Yards, a $4.9 billion real estate development, including a billion-dollar arena for one of the worst teams in the NBA. But the development firm hasn’t broken ground on any of the apartment towers and hasn’t even chosen an auditor yet. The Institute for Justice worked with property owners to try to stop government official s from abusing eminent domain for the Atlantic Yards project, but in 2009, New York’s highest state court upheld bulldozing Brooklynites’ homes and businesses and handing them all over to mega-developer Bruce Ratner.

What was supposed to be a $3 billion set of skyscrapers in Los Angeles is still a swath of vacant lots.

“In New London, Conn., a piece of land once eyed for a sprawling waterfront development with a hotel, office space and residential, is still fallow seven years after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of eminent domain to take homes on the site. The new mayor, Daryl Finizio, says now the city is hoping to start on a residential development on a portion of the 90-acre site by mid-2013, but for now the site is without the new neighborhood and the envisioned tax revenues.”